The Hell Garage Demons were itching to do something Italian this week, what with Dante being so central to their reading list and all, but we had a Lancia-vs.-Fiat challenge not long ago. "We need more American Hell Projects!" I told them.

Well, that argument went back and forth for a while, but then I remembered how a couple of Detroit manufacturers had the brilliant idea of flying partly finished cars for special work to Italy during the late 1980s, so as to give them genuine Italian provenance. This idea cost Chrysler and General Motors plenty of pointlessly squandered dollars, but it produced the very memorable and--if one's rose-colored glasses are sufficiently rosy--collectible Chrysler TC by Maserati and the Cadillac Allanté.

The Allant&eacute; was a Cadillac with a Pininfarina body!

Imagine, if you can, a production line that starts with Pininfarina building a car's body in Cambiano, Italy, followed by that body being loaded into a specially-modified Boeing 747 and flown to Hamtramck, Mich. Once in Hamtramck, Cadillac shop rats would attach the Pininfarina body to a shortened Eldorado chassis.

Prior to the 1993 (and final) model year, the Allanté was powered by the HT4100 Cadillac V8, a pushrod engine that's a bit less sporty than, say, the Maserati quad-cam V8. But who cares? The Allanté was a Cadillac with a Pininfarina body! These days, many Allanté owners say that their cars (which sold for $54,700 in 1987) should be worth well into the five figures, but the cold light of economic reality doesn't take long to chase the cockroaches out of that room.

Still, it's tough to find a truly affordable Allanté project car; you need to find a seller who has spent six months chopping $500 per week off his car's price--and then lowball him some more.

Fortunately, you can find the occasional Allanté seller who understands how supply and demand really works, and the Hell Garage Demons have found such a seller in Florida: here is a 1988 Cadillac Allanté with an asking price of just $2,500 (go here if the listing disappears).

Now, when you look at car ads on Craigslist, you usually find that they're written in pure Craigslist-ese, i.e., nearly unintelligible, and what little you can understand is obviously half-truths or worse. This seller actually understands how to use written English, and he or she even describes some of the car's problems in strangely descriptive detail. There's a whole series of fuel-pump deaths and replacements in the car's past, but the seller claims "the car is now running again" after sitting for eight years.

That's good to know, but the car doesn't stop so well; the "ABS was removed," whatever that means, and put on another Allanté after this one's fuel pump woes grounded it. Is the master cylinder still there? The lines? Who can say? Then there's the matter of the body, which has been exposed to the Florida elements for nearly a decade. The interior may or may not be good. Still, how hard could it be to get this Italo-Detroit machine back in full, luxurious effect?

It's a challenge to find a reasonably priced TC by Maserati for much the same reason that Allant&eacute;s cost so much: sellers tend to have a hallucinatory view of their cars' value.

The Allanté comes with a nice blend of Cadillac and Pininfarina prestige, combining the engineering know-how of the company that built the Cimarron with the style of the company that designed the 1952 Nash Ambassador's body.

But, really, if you're going to drive a car built in both Michigan and Italy, shouldn't it have badges bearing the name of a legendary Italian automaker? I speak, of course, of Maserati, which was partially owned by Chrysler during the 1980s. Your TC by Maserati naysayers might point out that the TC is built on a K-platform-based chassis, just like the distinctly downmarket Aries-K and the not-real-sporty Chrysler Town & Country minivan, but pay them no mind! You will know in your heart that this high-performance convertible, which was actually assembled in Milan, is a true Maserati, just like the Biturbo.

Not only that, but the 1989 TC came with a 2.2-liter Chrysler turbo four equipped with a Cosworth-cast cylinder head and it put out an impressive 200 hp. It's a challenge to find a reasonably priced TC by Maserati for much the same reason that Allantés cost so much: sellers tend to have a hallucinatory view of their cars' value.

However, the Hell Garage Demons are nothing if not persistent, and they've found this 1989 Chrysler TC by Maserati in Southern California for a very reasonable $1,500 (go here if the listing disappears). The main reason that this car is priced at the end point of the usual $15,000-to-$1,500 price progression that you see with TCs is that the seller is a prostate-cancer charity that got this car as a donation. The car is currently in nonoperational registration status, which means that it probably sat for quite some time before being donated to the Prostate Cancer Awareness Project.

The interior looks icky somewhat rough, but you'll just need to chase down a parts donor with a nice interior or (far more likely) pay an upholstery shop a tremendous quantity fair amount of money to fix the 23-year-old leather. As for mechanical condition, the car "starts under its own power," "has a fair idle" and "shifts through all the gears." Easy, right? Right!